


Broken-winged birds

by D_melanogaster



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers family (mentioned), Communication Failure, Existential Angst, M/M, Relationship Issues, Steve Feels, brief Bucky/OMC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 23:08:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1796680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/D_melanogaster/pseuds/D_melanogaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve lies awake and stares at the ceiling and thinks back to where he went wrong.</p>
<p>He thinks it was probably when he went looking for Bucky. He should have been less selfish and let Bucky go, not dragged him back to New York and expected him to remember. He'd just wanted Bucky to remember <i>Steve</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken-winged birds

**Author's Note:**

> Hold fast to dreams,  
> for if dreams die  
> Life is a broken-winged bird  
> that cannot fly.  
> ― Langston Hughes
> 
> I own nothing from MCU and I even borrowed the title. Only the mistakes are mine.

Getting Bucky back feels too good to be true. He’s different, tense and cautious, quieter than he’s ever been, he has violent nightmares and sometimes he slips to Russian in the middle of a sentence, but he’s still _Bucky_. Steve _got Bucky back_. There are no words to describe the feeling.

**

Bucky sleeps better when Steve’s keeping watch, so when they settle in the Avengers Tower, he migrates to Steve’s room. Steve sleeps better too; he can’t think it was only a dream when Bucky is really right there next to him.

**

Bucky kisses him one night, after a dream, and Steve kisses back. It’s new, but it’s a good new – he doesn’t get a lot of those.

**

He introduces Bucky to the Avengers, and it takes a little adjusting, but they get along. All is well.

**

And then, this one time they’re kissing, and they must have done it a hundred times, but something’s different.

It takes Steve a moment to figure out what it is that feels amiss, but then he realizes Bucky’s not hard. Confused, he takes a step back to ask what’s wrong, and – Bucky doesn’t even try to hold on, much less keep kissing. Bucky’s face is entirely blank, like he’s not at all affected by what they’ve been doing; the only hint of it on him is the mess Steve’s made of his hair.

“Wanna take this to the bedroom?” Bucky asks, in the same tones he asks Steve for the remote, and Steve feels ill.

“Not if you don’t,” he says, and watches as Bucky’s shoulders relax a little. “I don’t want to do anything that you don’t want,” he goes on, and backs away a few more steps. The tension in Bucky ebbs at the same rate.

“Oh. Right,” is the only thing Bucky says, with no inflection, glancing around the apartment as he speaks. Steve thinks that this must be how it feels to have someone reach inside your chest and squeeze.

They stand there for a long moment, Bucky completely blank and Steve nauseated, before Bucky turns away and goes to his bedroom.

It’s a while after Bucky’s door has clicked gently shut that Steve can move.

**

Steve doesn’t sleep that night. He lies awake and stares at the ceiling and thinks back to where he went wrong.

He thinks it was probably when he went looking for Bucky. He should have been less selfish and let Bucky go, not dragged him back to New York and expected him to remember. And Steve hadn’t cared if Bucky ever remembered the Winter Soldier, he just wanted Bucky to remember Bucky Barnes. He wanted Bucky to remember _Steve._ And now that Bucky does, Steve wonders what that actually means.

Steve remembers long, cold winters when Bucky looked after him when he was in bed with pneumonia, and springs when he got the snot beat out of him until Bucky stepped in and saved him, and summers where Bucky invited him on double dates so he’d be less lonely. Maybe Bucky remembers a sickly runt who needed minding, who had a knack for getting into fights but not the competence to get out of one, who couldn’t even ask a dame to dance. Maybe he can’t remember what he ever saw in that little runt, and thinks Steve hasn’t changed.

**

Bucky sleeps in his own room after that.

**

Steve noticed that Bucky was getting better, but in hindsight, he realizes that it’s only when he’s not around.

Bucky goes to the shooting range with Barton and spars with Natasha. He does yoga with Dr Banner and talks about different prosthesis designs with Tony. He is so clearly the Bucky from before when he does these things, and Steve has been so very glad to even catch a glimpse of his old friend to realize that the fleeting looks are all he gets. Whenever Bucky notices Steve coming into the room, he’ll grow quiet and still.

Once, a week after the kissing incident, Steve almost walks in on Bucky and Pepper chatting in his living room. They’re not speaking loud enough for Steve to catch what they’re talking about, but a comment from Pepper has Bucky laughing like Steve hasn’t heard since Bucky got drafted. With his head thrown back, full out guffawing, Bucky looks beautiful. Then he sees Steve standing by the door and the laughter peters out to awkward chuckles before dying out completely.

It feels like someone dropped an anvil on Steve’s sternum.

Steve murmurs his apologies for the interruption and goes for a run.

**

Steve figures it only makes sense Bucky gets along so well with the others. Everybody loves Bucky, because of course they do – Steve’s always thought it would be impossible not to. And then, Bucky probably likes Steve’s friends because they all understand him, and they’re great people in their own right.

Barton and Natasha share some of the same skillsets with him, but most of all, they both understand how it feels to have your mind controlled by someone else. Tony knows what it’s like to have to constantly depend on a piece of machinery. Dr Banner knows what it’s like to be out of control and angry, and can help Bucky manage it.

Steve should have the most in common with Bucky – both enhanced with a serum, both from a different time, and the years and years of shared history. But then, they have their differences. Bucky never wanted to go to war: he got drafted while Steve wanted it so much that he volunteered for an experimental procedure that changed him into a different man, just to get a chance to fight. Bucky had to be wiped out and rewritten to make him into a weapon, while Steve had only ever needed orders.

When Steve fell off the helicarrier to the Potomac, Bucky jumped after him and pulled him out of the river even when he didn’t really know who Steve was. When Bucky fell off the train in the Alps, Steve just stared.

**

Steve runs out of space in his notebook. He’s sketched it full, and he flips through it to see what all he’s drawn.

There are the first few pictures, of the Brooklyn he knew, of his Howling Commandos, of Peggy as he first knew her, even one or two of Howard Stark. Bucky’s in a lot of them – the Brooklyn ones, and of course with the Commandos – but at first there’s nothing of Bucky alone. Bucky was so familiar to him that he could have drawn him with his eyes closed, but back when he first woke up, his hands got too shaky to hold a pencil whenever he thought of his best friend.

Then he met the rest of the Avengers, and there are a few sketches of them. Natasha has the most, as Steve spent the most time with her then. There’s Sam, and a few where Sam has the wings. After that, there’s Bucky.

The old Bucky from before the war, and Sergeant Barnes, when Steve realized he’d lived and his hands no longer shook any time he thought of the man. Then the Winter Soldier, masked and deadly. James, as he now likes to be called, has pages and pages of drawings dedicated to him, from when Steve realized he didn’t have to sketch him from memory anymore and took any and every opportunity to draw him from the living model.

These stop because when Bucky realized what Steve was doing, he asked him not to do it anymore.

Steve went back to drawing him from memory, but of more recent memories; how he looked when they had breakfast on one day, watching a movie with Natasha on another, Tony working on his arm on the next. Steve remembers each occasion, and it painfully drives home his point. Bucky looks so much more relaxed, more comfortable in his own skin, when Steve isn’t actually in the room.

Steve draws Bucky laughing with Pepper on the inside of the back cover and stows the notebook beneath a pile of papers in his desk. He buys a new one and doesn’t draw people in that one.

**

Steve goes on a PR tour that Pepper talks him into, and it’s so much like his USO days that he wants to start joking about dancing monkeys. It’s not a big one; mostly just New York, where he lives anyway, and Los Angeles, where he stays for two weeks. It can hardly be called a tour at all, but it feels much longer than it is. He says what he’s supposed to say, smiles when he’s supposed to smile, and is extremely relieved when it’s over and he gets to go home.

The Avengers – well, minus Thor and Dr Banner – are in his living room with Bucky watching recordings of Steve’s talk show appearances when he gets there. Tony tells him Bucky invited them over, and Bucky grins and nods to confirm it. He hasn’t frozen up in the time since Steve came in, and he’s still laughing and joking and being generally sociable.

Steve is so happy to see that, all that progress, that it almost makes up for the fact he mostly jokes about Steve. He ribs Steve about the lack of uniform, and asks where his theme song is, until they get to the show where they’d actually played the Star Spangled Man when Steve was called on, and Bucky crows excitedly about that for the entire interview. At one point, he calls Steve a performing seal.

If it was Tony or Barton, Steve could just shrug it off – hell, they join in frequently, and Steve just laughs along, because it’s all in good fun. But Bucky might be the only person alive aside from Steve who knows exactly how much he’s always hated anything related to publicity, and Steve knows that Bucky remembers. He’d asked about it when the memories came back. Also, once upon a time, Steve knew Bucky inside and out, and that particular glint in his eyes hasn’t changed. Bucky knows exactly what he’s doing, and what it’s doing to Steve.

Steve doesn’t call him out, doesn’t dare with an audience, but also because he doesn’t want to know for sure why Bucky’s doing it. He’s being deliberately hurtful, going for any soft spot when apparently spending decades as an assassin against his will wasn’t enough to drive Steve away.

When they were looking for Bucky, Sam kept reminding Steve that there might come a time that he’d have to cut his losses. Just the thought made Steve’s heart freeze in his chest, then and now, but the way his lungs keep feeling too tight whenever Bucky laughs at his expense, he’s thinking he’s gonna have to do something.

**

Then Bucky brings a guy over. Steve doesn’t know where Bucky picked him up, but he looks a lot like Steve: tall, blond, with blue eyes, and muscles that sort of make Steve wonder how he got them without a supersoldier serum. Bucky introduces him to Steve. His name is Greg. Bucky flirts with Greg like he used to flirt with all the dames in Brooklyn; blatantly, irresistibly, and right in front of Steve. He even throws a wink at Steve over his shoulder when he leads Greg to his bedroom, like he used to do before walking girls home.

Bucky and Greg have several rounds of very loud sex that night. Steve lies very still in his own bed, trying not to listen to the racket from across the wall, and regretting every choice he ever made that got him to this point.

If Bucky’s campaign has been to shatter Steve’s heart and kill his every hope, well, he’s finally succeeded.

**

Steve thought the thing with Greg, and the poorly concealed gloating that followed, were as bad as it would get. He didn’t say it out loud at any point – he didn’t exactly feel like talking about this to anyone, and he wasn’t much in the habit of talking to himself – but apparently even thinking it was enough of a taunt to the Universe for it to prove him wrong.

There was a thing with dinosaurs in Central Park, which didn’t even sound so ridiculous after aliens and gods of Norse legend from another realm. During the course of said thing, Steve had to throw his shield to kill a velociraptor that tried to jump a little boy, which left him vulnerable to a pair of them and he got caught unawares.

Hawkeye kept him from getting entirely mauled, Natasha wrapped him up enough for a lift to the hospital, and Stark took him there and got him a private room and an entire team of doctors. He only had to stay a few days, and so far, he has spent the entirety of those two days hoping for a visit from his former best friend. Everyone pops by at least once, except for Bucky.

Bucky hasn’t so much as sent a card. The absolute indifference is even worse than the deliberate antagonism; at least Bucky had to be thinking of Steve when he tried to hurt Steve as much as possible. It used to be that Bucky was the only one who cared what happened to him, and now Steve can be virtually torn apart by dinosaurs right in front of him, and he won’t even bat an eye.

It’s time to leave, and the doctors are unwilling to let Steve go without someone there to make sure he gets home. Tony promised to send his favourite popsicle. Steve isn’t really surprised to see Dr Banner instead, and he’s almost relieved that Bucky sent someone else.

**

Steve spends another three days recuperating at home, and on the fourth day after a talk with Pepper and Tony, he plops down on the couch next to Bucky, who’s watching a zombie film from Tony’s extensive collection.

“Would it help you if you didn’t have to live with me anymore?” Steve asks, instead of a more traditional greeting. Bucky doesn’t even turn to look at him.

“Why do you ask?” is followed by a handful of popcorn carelessly tossed into Bucky’s mouth, and a derisive snort as a girl on the screen realizes she’s been locked in a room with three zombies.

“Well, I’ve been kind of getting the feeling that you don’t want me around.” It takes considerable concentration for Steve to keep his voice even. “And it feels like you do better when I’m not here. I know you think I’m an obstinate moron, but I don’t actually want to make you miserable.”

“Are you kicking me out? I like it here.” Bucky sounds almost forlorn, and the look on his face wouldn’t be out of place on a kicked puppy, but Steve was there when Bucky practised his pathetic act to get people to feel sorry enough to give him a job, or money, or medicine for poor little Stevie. This is that act exactly.

And suddenly, Bucky’s endgame becomes clear: he didn’t want Steve to go away, he wanted Steve to make _him_ go away. He was driving Steve into deserting him, so he could pretend to slink off and then make his escape. And now that he thinks he’s succeeded, he’s trying to make Steve _feel guilty about it_.

Steve doesn’t think he’s ever been so angry in his entire life, and it’s _Bucky_ who made him feel this way.

“Of course not, don’t be stupid. I’m telling you that _I’m_ leaving.” Steve feels a vindictive joy at the brief look of honest confusion on Bucky’s face. “I already talked to Stark and Ms Potts, and they helped me buy a new place in Brooklyn. It’s a lot more my style than this, really, and as you said, you like it here. You get along really well with everyone, too, and you spend a lot more time with them than I do. It only makes sense that you stay.”

For a moment, Bucky looks furious, but the expression blinks out and he fixes on the sad puppy eyes again.

“But they’re your team, right? It’s not like you can just _leave_ them,” he says, and Steve wants to wring his neck for implying that he’s a deserter, but, well. Steve did leave Bucky at the bottom of the ravine. He figures Bucky’s allowed as many hits below the belt as he wishes to dole out for that one. Instead of making Steve angrier like he probably intended, Bucky’s words only serve to make him sad, because Bucky’s never before said out loud that he thinks Steve shouldn’t have left him.

It’s not like Steve didn’t already know.

“I’m not leaving anyone. For God’s sake, I’m going to _Brooklyn_ , Stark could probably get me in less than ten minutes if needed. I’ll still see everyone, and of course they’ll still be my team. I’m just trying to make things easier on everyone. You’re obviously more comfortable in your own skin when I’m not around, and everybody’s noticed. It’d be nicer for all of us if things were a little less tense, and I’m taking out the stressor.” Steve sighs when his little speech only makes Bucky stare at him blankly.

“Look, I’m not saying it’s your fault, or that it’s bad if you feel you can’t be yourself when I’m around. I mean, obviously it’d be nice if you could, but it’s not like any of us can help how we feel. It’s not like I’m being a martyr either – I can see I’m hurting you just by being in the same room, and that makes me feel awful. I’ll be much happier back in the old neighbourhood, knowing that you’ll be comfortable here.” And then Steve gives Bucky his best earnest grin, to sell another bright side. “You can bring Greg to stay over more often, too, I think he’ll be glad to have some privacy for a change.”

Bucky gives an almost imperceptible flinch at this, and Steve feels a little vindicated. Mostly he just feels sick he made Bucky look that way.

“I’ll always be on your team, too, and I hope you know that. You’ll always be my best guy no matter what. But times change, I guess, and it’s not like we need to be living together anymore to make ends meet.” Steve gives Bucky a small smile and gets to his feet. “I changed the sheets on the bed, if you want to use it for guests. You can do whatever you want with the room, obviously.”

“You’re leaving already?” Bucky asks, and he sounds genuinely lost in a way that makes Steve want to sit back down and hug him and never let go.  They’ve just been over the reasons why that’s not a good idea, though, and so he just shrugs and tries to smile again.

“Well, it’s not like packing took long, and I figured I’d get out of your hair. I’ll be just a phone call away if you ever need me, and I reckon I’ll see you around anyway. I, ah, I’ll let you get back to your film.”

He has only a sports bag filled with the things he’s taking with him, and it’s already waiting by the door. He calls out a goodnight as he’s leaving, and there’s a mumbling reply from the living room before the door clicks gently shut behind him.

**

Brooklyn’s great, and living alone is swell. Steve especially likes how there’s nobody around to freeze off when he walks in, it makes him feel so much better about himself.

He doesn’t feel all that great, anyway.

Bucky has apparently refashioned his old room, or at least gone through it, because he mails Steve the sketchbook Steve buried and forgot in the desk. Bucky probably looked through it to see what it was. Even the thought is enough to make Steve cringe.

He doesn’t want to look at it, but he can’t bring himself to throw it away, either, so he again shoves it out of sight and pretends it doesn’t exist. He still doesn’t feel like drawing people.

**

Time goes by like it always does, and there are good days and bad days. Steve finds a little corner store a few blocks down that’s owned by a lovely old couple and now it’s where he buys all his groceries. Bucky becomes an official part of the Avengers. Steve turns his guestroom into a studio where the most he does is stare at a blank canvas. Bucky never says what he did with Steve’s old room. Steve doesn’t ask. Bucky doesn’t ever talk to him at all. Steve gets used to it.

Bucky stops aiming for Steve’s soft spots, and even though Steve is grateful that his feelings are no longer being ridiculed, he still has days when he curses himself for loving a man who won’t love him back. Bucky never takes guys home anymore. Steve learns to call him James.

**

There are evil engineers, and megalomaniacal scientists, and a few occasions where Steve has to trot out the dancing monkey act. He’s been living in Brooklyn for seven months when a few leftover HYDRA agents attack him right outside his building while he’s coming back from his morning run. They have sedatives strong enough to knock Steve out in two seconds flat, and he’s hit with a dart before he even realizes he’s being attacked.

**

They want to see if the serum can be reversed. They’re shooting Steve up with all sorts of things that leave him sick and dazed. They keep him chained to a table and don’t give him anything to eat or drink. All these he could take, but the things they say are the worst and they just _keep talking_.

Things like, everything special about him came out of a bottle. Like asking if the Winter Soldier is talking to him yet. Like how Steve is pathetic for a superhero, they only needed one man to take him down, and nobody even knows he’s gone because his friends disliked him enough to send him to live on a whole another island, away from them.

And Steve thinks of his friends, who have probably realized by now that something’s off. But then, they do have their own lives, and Steve does kind of keep to himself. He wants to trust his teammates, especially with Bucky on the team, because Bucky will always come for Steve. Only, he’s not really Bucky anymore, and he doesn’t care about Steve anymore either. He feels a lot less confident after that.

**

Steve’s been injected with something that _burns_ , and the pain is what wakes him up. He’s screaming, he thinks, and wishes he could tear himself free from the restraints, just so that he could claw off his skin and the burning things with it.

They’re excited, Steve thinks from what little he understands anymore; they probably think it’s working and undoing the serum. Steve doesn’t think it does anything but just hurts, and he screams until he can’t even do that.

**

The next time Steve wakes, he’s screamed himself hoarse and Bucky’s standing over him, releasing his holds. Steve wants to say he had them on the ropes, or something, but it’s not really Bucky, it’s James, so he doesn’t say anything. His throat hurts too much to speak anyway, and there’s blood in his mouth after he coughs. He stands up and goes out again.

**

After, everyone’s very concerned about what he was told when he was on that table. Jameskeeps asking what they said, what they did, and Steve thinks he must be worried Steve’s been brainwashed. Steve doesn’t want to talk about it so he says he doesn’t remember. He’s fine now.

They insist on having Steve come back to Stark Tower with them, James says his old room is ready and waiting for him. Steve doesn’t really feel sure enough of himself to go back to that; to having James shut off whenever Steve walks into a room, mostly, but also this new tendency of everyone to look at him with poorly concealed concern is not something he wants to endure on a daily basis.

Then Natasha gives him an impassionate – for her – speech about how they all spent three nights and days looking for him while knowing he was in the hands of people who wanted to cut him apart to see what would happen, and how they want to be sure he’s safe now. Steve can’t say no to that, but he swears to himself he’ll get back to Brooklyn once things calm down.

**

His room really is the same as he left it. If James hadn’t mailed him the sketchbook, and if everything wasn’t conspicuously clear of dust, Steve would swear nobody’s even been in there. 

James hovers by Steve’s room – he doesn’t come in, and he doesn’t talk to Steve, but he keeps walking past the door. Steve figures that if he asked, James would probably have an excuse every time. He doesn’t ask.

He does, however, move to the living room to watch a movie after a while. He figures James appreciates the chance to sit down.

**

A few days after Steve got out of the hospital, James has graduated on to leaving him unattended for short periods of time. He doesn’t come up with unspoken excuses to stalk by Steve, or invite the rest of the Avengers over to babysit when it gets to be too much for him.

Steve supposes that that’s why James goes with no protests when Tony drops in and asks to have a word, even if it means leaving Steve alone.

James comes back two hours later, pale and with something wild in his eyes that Steve hasn’t really seen since the Winter Soldier. Tony’s with him, quiet, rumpled, hands shaking as he sits on the couch next to Steve.

“We, um. We recovered their footage. They filmed you.” Steve takes Tony’s halting words to mean his friends have spent the past two hours watching how his kidnappers tortured him. “You know they were wrong, right?”

“I know nobody sent me away, guys, don’t worry. I knew all along that you’d get me out of there,” Steve says, because this is probably the part that his friends would be most concerned about.

“Not just that, Cap, all the rest of it, too,” Tony says, uncharacteristically serious, and Steve suddenly realizes which part Tony would really object to most.

“Listen, Stark,” he starts, unsure of whether he actually wants to say this, “you were by no means the first to say that I’d be nothing special without the serum, and I know you don’t think it’s true, anyway. No hard feelings, I swear.”

Tony still looks doubtful but he takes his leave with a smile, so Steve figures they’re all right. James doesn’t leave, stays next to Steve on the couch for the rest of the evening, not even looking at the movie but staring thoughtfully at Steve instead. Steve thinks it’s better not to ask.

**

Steve never really had a lot of friends – only Bucky before the war, and then the commandos and Peggy and maybe Howard Stark during. Then he lost Bucky, and days later he crashed into the Arctic. And then, seventy years later for everyone else, but for him the next thing he knew, he was waking up to a radio blasting a ballgame he’d watched with his freshly deceased best friend. They’d thought it would _help him_.

What followed was even worse: everyone he’d ever loved was dead or as good as, almost every place he’d been to had become unrecognizable, and it seemed nothing worked the same anymore. He was out of place, out of time, surrounded by people who expected him to be a walking propaganda film. There were plenty of friendly faces, but none he could trust.

The only thing that made him feel alive again was getting Bucky back, and for a moment there, he’d been _so happy_ to be in this new century, if only so that his best and oldest friend had someone to welcome him home.

Of course, then Bucky hadn’t wanted anything to do with him, and he was right back to sometimes quietly wishing nobody had ever dug him out of that goddamn plane.

For some reason his fellow Avengers seem to think that a few HYDRA goons are going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, but in a way, they’re the only familiar thing around. He’s always had plenty of bullies.

**

It doesn’t take Steve very long to recover, but he stays in James’ guestroom for another week after that to appease his teammates. When he starts making noises about going back to Brooklyn, Tony’s the one who tries to talk him out of it.

The bonkers billionaire offers to make Steve a new floor.

It’s not that Steve’s not flattered by the gesture – he is, it’s nice that someone wants him around so much that they’re willing to extend such outrageous offers – but he left because people needed space, and that hasn’t changed.

“I’m not saying I understand what the hell you two are doing, because trust me, no one does,” Tony says with a grin, “but you do know the last time you left, your boy spent three weeks on your tail?”

No, Steve didn’t know that.

“He still has his nest on the roof of the opposite building. He’s the one who realized you were missing,” Tony goes on, and Steve doesn’t really know if that makes things better or worse.

“He still won’t talk to me. He won’t look at me if he thinks I can see, he won’t talk to _anyone_ if I’m in the room, and he keeps implying he’d rather I didn’t acknowledge his existence. Time was Bucky was the only one who looked happy when I walked into a room, and I can deal with the PTSD and brainwashing and hit count, but I can’t deal with constantly seeing how _unhappy_ I make him now.”

Tony looks sceptic. “You’re the only thing he ever talks about to the rest of us. We used to do this, Steve used to love that, and apparently you used to snore like a chainsaw. Who knew?”

Worse. This definitely makes it worse.

“All right, Cap, I won’t refurbish you another floor. But maybe you could ask Barnes what he actually thinks before you send yourself to exile again,” Tony says, and gives Steve a firm pat on the shoulder as he leaves.

**

Steve takes Tony’s advice and asks that night.

“Do you want me to go back to Brooklyn?” He’s in an armchair in the living room when James comes to the apartment after dinner. James was on his way to his bedroom, but freezes in the hall at Steve’s question.

He shuffles quietly over to the living room and takes a seat on the couch. The silence stretches on interminably, and Steve wonders when he ought to give up.

“…No.” James clears his throat, and says it again, stronger. “No. I don’t want you to leave.”

“You want me to stay here?” Steve asks, and if he sounds incredulous, well, it wasn’t the answer he was expecting.

“Yes.” This time the reply is swift and sure.

“Okay. Okay, I’ll stay,” Steve says, and James gives him a small smile. It’s the first in _months_.

“I’m sorry. For last time. I was a jerk.”

Steve almost wants to say that no, he wasn’t, but he can’t quite bring himself to actually speak the words.

“It was just too good to be real, y’know? I kept thinking that there had to be some trick, some price, and it would suddenly all just disappear.” James’ eyebrows knit together in a frown, and he fidgets a little, pushes a strand of hair behind his ear and doesn’t look at Steve. “Of course, I just ruined everything myself in the end.”

“No, come on, James. I don’t think anything’s beyond repair,” Steve says, and if his voice sounds a little hoarse it must be because there’s something lodged in his throat. There’s also something hot in his eyes and it might spill over any moment now, and then he’ll really be crying.

“Would you come here already?” James asks, standing up at the same time as Steve jumps to his feet, and Steve has really missed James’ hugs. “And keep – keep calling me Bucky, okay? I’m _Bucky_ , I promise, Steve, I promise I am,” and Steve sobs out a laugh into Bucky’s shoulder.

**

Bucky didn’t turn Steve’s old room into a guestroom. He turned his own room into a studio for Steve. _Better light_ , he insists, and never acknowledges that Steve was living somewhere else when he did the remodeling.

The studio doesn’t have a bed. It’s fine, they can share Steve’s.

 

**Author's Note:**

> There is now a Bucky POV companion piece to this, and a link to it below.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Deep Roots](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2108802) by [D_melanogaster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/D_melanogaster/pseuds/D_melanogaster)




End file.
